Sarah Radford lecture

Sarah Radford, who graduated from JOMEC in 2004 (see picture to the right), is an online journalist with The Newbury Weekly News, whose website, NewburyToday, won last month’s Newspaper Society's "Best Weekly Newspaper Internet Site" award. She is the eighth lecturer in JOMEC’s online lecture programme.

The lion’s share of a local newspaper’s income is from advertising. At £1 a word to propose to the love of your life in the local paper, it’s not surprising you see the occasional: “B, mari me? F”. So it was interesting to hear Ms Radford say the directors of The Newbury Weekly News were looking to have the website pay for itself in advertising revenue within two to three years.

NewburyToday reminded me of a website I have done some work for, the official Crystal Palace FC site, which is a Premium TV site. They produce a similar multimedia product as NewburyToday but it is funded by a yearly subscription.

The BBC is considering selling advertising space on its website to foreign users (aka non-licence fee payers). It would be interesting to see, in a few years time, what percentage of the average local paper’s income is net-generated. If papers stay in their present form, will the net be seen as the more important medium in terms of advertising revenue like a supplement?

Richard Burton discussed picture galleries and the fact that every new click creates a new page impression. This is gold when selling advertising space. As more local newspaper websites start using these, and similar devices, a more profitable future could be sooner than expected.